Are the Canadian Screen Awards too Canadian?

Yet the film wasn’t eligible to make a splash at the CSAs this weekend. Nor was The Handmaid’s Tale, the locally shot Hulu smash that claimed the top drama prize at the most recent Emmys. With so many acclaimed productions being made in Canada — and largely by Canadians — it’s natural to wonder whether the Canadian Screen Awards would be much improved by relaxing the restrictions that exclude quasi-Canuck fare from qualification.

But seemingly everyone from award organizers, nominees and even The Shape of Water’s Toronto producer agree that loosening those rules would only hurt the show and the industry.

“I don’t feel that we should have been nominated for the CSAs,” said Shape of Water producer J. Miles Dale, fresh off accepting his Oscar. “I feel like that line has to be set somewhere, and sometimes I’ve wondered where that line should be, but I think that they have set it really the only place they can set it.

“I’m sure it’s frustrating for some people, but that’s what it is. Otherwise, it would be so open to interpretation and arbitration that it would be virtually impossible to deal with.”

In fact, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, which puts on the CSAs, isn’t actually responsible for deciding on a TV show or film’s innate Canadianness.

On the film side, the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office certifies domestic productions as Canadian, while Telefilm Canada is in charge of certifying co-productions based on a set of quite specific criteria — including that Canada and the co-producing country must contribute between 15 and 30 per cent of the film’s finances. The CRTC decides which TV shows qualify.

Still, academy leadership has no qualms about the current criteria, which prevent blurring the line between Hollywood North and actual Hollywood.

Canada is “right alongside the largest creator of English content in the world and it would be very easy for our Canadian voices to get lost in that,” said academy CEO Beth Janson. “We are an extremely attractive place to produce content for people south of the border, and that is fantastic and a huge component of our industry, but amongst that we do have some Canadian voices who are working alongside these often much bigger productions.

“In some ways, it’s especially important (to highlight those voices) because we do have such a vibrant production services sector.”

The Shape of Water, certainly, is a local success story. Roberto Campanella, the former National Ballet of Canada soloist who choreographed the film’s sublime dance scenes, gathered recently with the film’s crew to watch the Oscars at Cinespace Film Studios in Etobicoke, where it was filmed. When the announcement came, he recalls an eruption of emotion.

“There were some tears,” he said. “Big, big Canadian pride.”

So the film is at least to some degree Canadian, but fails the citizenship test in a few key ways.

“I know it may seem arbitrary, but The Shape of Water, while it was made 90 per cent by Canadians — Canadian producer, Canadian production designer, Canadian costume designer, entire Canadian crew — it was still written and directed by a Mexican; it was financed 100 per cent by an American studio, Fox; and essentially the top six cast were American and British,” explained Dale.

“So I don’t feel snubbed.”

So what would be the potential benefit for the academy of relaxing its restrictions and including, say, Denis Villeneuve’s double Oscar winner Blade Runner 2049?

Simply put, nominating popular movies and shows could make the Canadian Screen Awards more popular, which could theoretically bring more attention to other, less prominent nominees. There is some precedent for a regionally based award show with less-than-stringent eligibility rules: the BAFTA Award organizers, for instance, allow themselves significant leeway to decide which films are sufficiently British (their TV award restrictions are more rigid). It also separates the categories, with an award for Best Film and another for Outstanding British Film.

But that hypothetical trickle-down of viewer attention doesn’t persuade many of this year’s Canadian Screen Award nominees that opening competition up to more American productions would work.

“If we let productions with only ties to Canada take part in the CSAs, they would clean up,” said Nirvanna the Band the Show’s Jay McCarrol, whose show is up for multiple awards including Best Comedy Series. “We need to build our own momentum and make sure we fund and produce good Canadian content.”

“The difference in means and context is just too big for Canadian and American projects to cohabitate fairly,” agreed Montreal’s Ian Lagarde, nominated for achievement in direction for All You Can Eat Buddha. “I might be oversimplifying, but it feels like the CSAs would become a Canadianized or cannibalized version of the Oscars.”

With such reform seemingly off the table anyway, the academy can only hope that a Canuck-to-the-core film can soon capture the public imagination. Several acclaimed titles are competing for Best Motion Picture on Sunday — Ava, The Breadwinner, Maudie, Never Steady, Never Still, The Ravenous, It’s the Heart That Dies Last and The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches — but they are hardly runaway hits.

“Our hope is in the future we’ll see people being as familiar with our Best Picture nominees as they are with some of the bigger budget productions that have bigger marketing dollars behind them,” Janson said.

“We do think that the films are extraordinary and worthy of being seen more widely.”